Today, the “white cube” has become the ideal space for presenting art. Contemporary exhibition visitors are hardly surprised that from museum to gallery and back, the clean white walls have become the preferred environment for displaying artworks whether it’s painting, sculpture, or installation. Even video art, for which the “black box” is traditionally considered most suitable, is often shown in the white cube. What tends to stand out now is any deviation from the canon of the white cube.
White walls haven’t always been the favored background for art presentation. This decision, now a contemporary tradition, is directly linked to certain 20th-century art trends and exhibition methods. Before becoming standard practice in the mid-20th century, white walls were a deliberate artistic strategy against previous traditions in the understanding of art. The purging of exhibition spaces from anything that might interfere with the perception of an artwork carries the history of modernism’s struggles and ambitions. On the other hand, this “sanitizing” of space from symbols of power and elite culture creates a sterile environment, cut off from life outside the gallery. The almost immediate adoption of the white cube by leading private galleries and museums triggered artists’ resistance to its detachment from the wider public context. These turbulent transformations in attitudes toward the space that presents, and to some extent defines, what art is, reveal that this space is far from neutral. It is heavily loaded with conflicting ideas about art and the conditions of its presentation. In the Bulgarian context, the 1980s and 1990s confirmed such forms of resistance from nonconventional practices against the logic of the modernist project of socialist realism. Yet today, the white cube is tacitly accepted as the “natural” space for exhibiting art, a practice that, at least to some extent, connects the local scene with the global context and its exhibition norms.
After the temporary closure of galleries and art spaces during the pandemic, it has become clear that the existence and maintenance of this space is threatened by global crises. The white cube has its necessities, and the ability to present art within it is not a given, it is a practice that concerns a broad network of gallerists, curators, artists, art historians, and audiences. In the context of escalating global military conflicts, the political role of this space must be understood even more clearly. From this perspective, the curatorial project “The White Cube,” which could be described as a “pedagogical exhibition,” traces not only the key developments of this exhibition format but also its specific local role within artistic, social, and political realities.
The project is realized with the technical assistance of sculptor Ivaylo Avramov.
The project is organized by the Temporary Space Foundation with the support of Doza Gallery.
The publication of Isn’t It Enough? Thoughts on Contemporary Art by Igor Zabel is supported by the National Culture Fund, “Criticism” program.
